What does it take to create a program that matters to youth? We consider the issues from the theoretical to the practical through our work in Project Coach. PC is a Smith College program that teaches teenagers to be youth sport coaches. As a coach, our teenagers must inspire, communicate, problem solve, resolve conflict, plan strategically, and deploy a range of emotional intelligences.
PC uses sports as a means to engage, connect, and empower adolescents.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Umass Basketball Clinic

The month of January and February may have been a break from regular Project Coach programing at the Springfield elementary schools, but the high school coaches stayed plenty busy during these months between fundraisers, crew training, college visits, project coach training days, and multiple sports clinics at local colleges and universities. As a program we were very grateful to have both Amherst and Umass offer to run basketball clinics this past month and Western New England University offer to run a volleyball clinic with us in this past week.

The Umass clinic on February 2, 2013 was especially a treat as we had the Minutemen's home court, the Mullins Center all to ourselves. The Umass women's team put on a great clinic for our high school coaches and staff in which we went through an array of drills ending with a rather competitive (but friendly) scrimmage.

Overall we had a lot of fun with the Umass players and coaches, learned some good instructional tips and drills, and the high school coaches also got to ask the players great questions about college life and how they manage to balance school and extracurriculars. After the clinic the day continued as half of the group went to the Amherst basketball game to support the players who had run a clinic with us in late January, while the other half went on a tour of the Umass campus areas of interest to them with the Umass coaches and some of the Red Shirts.